-Yes, these transcripts need editing... I chose to post them as is because I beleive the content is most important and takes precedent over style for the time being...LM-

David has studied with Desda Zuckerman as an advanced student.I was introduced to him through Desda who said he would be a good person to interview about tree communication.

David offers workshops on dowsing and connecting with nature at a spiritual level. He kindly allowed a couple of hours for this interview which began in his yard.He then took me to a special power spot in the Marin hills where there are oak groves and madrones.He had his dowsing rod and the swirling energy was clearly identified with the movement and spinning of the rod.

He is able to sense this without the use of a rod however it is more difficult for me.The use of a rod is very helpful when learning how to connect with subtle energies.

LINDA:

What prompted you to learn about the subtle energies and to do this healing work?

DAVID:

Well, it’s kind of a haphazard journey I guess.I got into the healing business by essentially being a lost person.I had gotten into a bad car accident in 1979 so I decided since I had a lot of healing to do I might as well study it.

And the only thing I had to go on was that somebody said I had good hands when I gave them a message.That was a friend of mine whom I thought probably had a valid opinion so I said, what the heck.I know I don’t want to be a doctor because I would never want to work in a hospital, I really hated the hospital experience.

So I decided to study holistic health.I went all over the place looking for a holistic health program and settled in Santa Cruz, CA and began a health care practitioner program at the junior college.My grades weren’t good enough to get into a regular college at that point - I was pretty much anti-school.

But I figured school was better than washing dishes, which was what I was doing and also learning how to cook which was a good skill but not something I wanted to do forever.

I started taking massage classes while taking the health professional program and art classes and prerequisites and things like that.And I stumbled into acupuncture school because one of my massage teachers was beginning to study this so I did that too.

And I turned out to be really good at using the needles even though I thought at first I would study this only because it would help my massage work. And I would have one lucky break after another.

People would get pregnant and have me take over their practice and then I got a job in San Francisco for eight years at very low pay but people loved working with me and I had a full practice.That was a very good experience to have such a busy practice even though I wasn’t being paid very much.

I was actually married to someone who was 19 years older than me and we were kind of stuck in Berkeley, CA but neither of us wanted to be there.And then she got breast cancer and went through the process of treatment and was better for about three years.But then she got it again and within two years she died.

So I didn’t really need to be there anymore.That was a big transition and I knew there was nothing holding me there anymore.So I moved to Marin

(Marin county just north of San Francisco) which is where I had wanted to be anyway. And I was chasing a girl of course and that’s what got me here.I’m grateful to her for that even though she immediately said, “ahh, you’re too close” and so she left.

LINDA:

When was this?

DAVID:

This was in 1999.So when I moved over here I again got a job substituting for someone who was away doing an internship for his American MD because he had an Israeli MD.He was an acupuncturist here so I took part of his practice.

In his office there were these flyers for space clearing.I looked at the flyers and looked at the person on the flyer and wondered how I knew this person. I knew I had ever met her in my life but I also just knew who she was.

It was a very interesting feeling.

Well, it turned out to be Desda.( we laugh)

(Desda Zuckerman, the woman who introduced me to DAVID. LM)

And as it turns out I had an interesting experience, my mom, when I moved over here, she said, “would you like to go to Germany with me for two weeks to receive darshan with Mother Mira”?And I said, Sure.So I put all my stuff in my new place – it was all in boxes and I just left it that way – and went to Germany.

(Darshan is a Sanskrit term which refers to being in the presence of,- or having an introduction to or brief meeting with,- a Guru or a saintly person.Mother Mira is a Guru from India. Typically there are any number of people sitting in the same room as people take turns approaching the Guru.)

I had 8 sessions of darshan over the two weeks and it was all very interesting and different and new.And I had learned enough meditation so that I could sit through the three hours but I didn’t really feel a whole lot.

But on the very last day I had this experience of being outside of myself, somewhere “out there”. Yet I felt completely connected to everything I thought of as myself ordinarily which was all in here somewhere. (indicates

inside of his body)

I thought, wait a minute, if this isn’t me then what is that?Because that felt like me and this (meaning his physical body) just felt like stuff.

So all of the things I thought of as myself were in this larger container and I thought, well what is this experience?

Within days of coming back I meet Desda.She comes to my place and does a clearing of the old energy in my little place and does earth acupuncture outside of my office.And I’m going, oooohhhh, that was fun, what was that!

She is sticking sticks in the ground and looking around and using her little wire.

LINDA:

Did you feel a difference between before and after?

DAVID:

I did.And I had a painting at the time and she said, “oh this painting is problematic”.And it really contained a lot of the sadness of the past 5 years. It was my wife’s friend who had done the painting and had given it to Juanita.

So Desda took some basilica, which is used as incense in the catholic church.It’s a resin from a tree and you put it on a piece of charcoal.

She lit it and waved it in front of the painting and I’m going, Ok, she’s clearing the painting, whatever.But as I watched, brighter colors popped out of the painting in front of my eyes and I was like, whoa – there’s something here.

And she’s doing the clearing in the house and I’m feeling all kinds of things happening.

LINDA:

Can you elaborate on some of the things you were feeling then?

DAVID:

It was long ago and I couldn’t be very specific other than I felt stuff happening.

Desda made some very astute comments that caught my attention.She asked, “who made this big impression in your bed”?Is it this person or that person?”

I then just sort of ticked off the women that had been in my life recently and she said, “no, no ,no”.And then I said well there was this other woman from Germany whom I was like considering. And she said, “Oh yes, wow, left a big impression there”…

And I was thinking, how did she know that?

The little place I was in was all windows and she said, “I want you to close the windows at night when you’re here because you’re life is all about having too many things get in.”

And again I was thinking, well how does she know that?

Anyway, I got very intrigued and she was willing to do trades with me for acupuncture. She liked my acupuncture and she did a few energy work sessions with me.Things like reaching up in the air and twiddle a little invisible knob and I would feel something shift in my head and I would go, what the hell was that!(we laugh)

Or she would go, “you actually need a little earth energy” and I would suddenly feel like I weighed a thousand pounds!Or “you need a little fire” and I would get all hot inside and I thought this was really weird.

So I was intrigued and eventually I took her course.

It was a course on how to use the dowsing rod and then she taught a few of her little procedures.Things like working with karmic wounds and something she called sub-structure repair and soul path congestions.

And by the end of the course I was like, whoaaaooaa!This is the modern shamanism that I’ve been looking for all along.So I started tugging on her shirt sleeves and saying, you have to teach us this stuff.It can’t just be random seminars, we actually need to learn this stuff.

So she put together this apprenticeship program.There were three other people by the time it really got rolling and after about four years, all of us got tired of it.

All the apprentices got together and decided we were done doing it this way and Desda agreed.

For about a year afterwards we had a few meetings and after that there were two of us who followed up with her to continue our education.

And that is working out really well to do small, intense bits of stuff.

We were the first group to really ask for an intensive education from her and get her to transmit the teachings. So she was developing this we went along and we would come in and contract whatever it was that she was thinking about teaching, get that work done on us and then come out reeling.

It’s gotten a lot more organized and there’s a regular curriculum and course of study with homework now.Not that we didn’t have those things but it’s a lot more organized now.

Which is a lot like what happened with me and the acupuncture school.

I’m an Aries and that seems to be the one Aries trait that I really have is that I’m always at the start of things.

One of the things we learned was about working with the energies of the earth and becoming sensitized to this .

There was a class Desda taught called the nine levels of sensing.She took us out into the woods and we were moving through the different layers of our energetic structure to see what the sensory properties of these layers are.In working with the energies of the earth we learned how to use these different layers to sense things.And it turns out that you pretty much always want to be at the outer edge of your structure when you’re sensing anything because otherwise you can get mixed up with the energies of things.

However, you have all the other sensory abilities available to you within your own container.

We learned a lot of things which included some space clearing but she didn’t go into that as much.Moving old energy and putting new energy into structures and that’s what we do in healing basically is to remove energies that aren’t really serving you anymore.Or also bringing consciousness toways in which energy is being held in your structure that has been giving you lessons.And you remove that and replace it with something that is far more energized and valuable to help your structure reassert its natural balance.

When we were out there in the woods I started moving into an ability of what she calls spiritual communion.So spiritual is the layer in which you can communicate with and be at the same level of the energies of the plants and animals…

I don’t know if you feel it now but in paying attention to that layer there is a somewhat high feeling to it.It’s a very high vibrating level and there’s a sense of being one with things.

LINDA:

Can you talk a bit about how you get into that state?

DAVID:

For me it’s literally a matter of moving my awareness out to the level of where that already is, it’s a location thing.So for me it’s expanding my awareness out to my edge and including this inner layer if you will that completely surrounds me.So the outer layer is already in communion with the nature spirits, the elves, and the fairies.That is one of its capacities, its abilities.That spiritual layer is almost that mythical layer if you will, where that mythical level has just as much validity as “normal reality”.

LINDA:

Wonderfully put.

DAVID:

And this is where you can see and feel the energy moving through everything.

LINDA:

You said that you were in that part of your edge now…

DAVID:

Yes, we are a lot bigger than we think we are, energetically. We extend about 8’ – 10’ out from our physical body.And at this point there are some constrictions that just got released in my structure so I can pretty much expand it to be all the way to the top of the mountain there or even over to the ocean if I want.(These are several miles away).

Having been freed up from these certain constrictions allows me to go farther because of it.

The truth is we don’t really have any limit to how big we are energetically.We don’t really have a location or a limitation on our consciousness.And to think that we have a location is actually absurd.And yet we do but it’s just because our consciousness, which has no location or limitation, made it up!

(we laugh)

LINDA:

In your expanded state now, can you speak about anything you might be picking up from the nature spirits?

(we have been outside in his yard all this time)

DAVID:I can feel the roots growing under our feet just as much as I can see and feel the leaves growing overhead.

LINDA:

How do you feel the roots growing?

DAVID:

Well, tuning in to any of the specific plants, there’s a distinct energy there.It has its own signature, its own vibrational quality.

Your brain and actually your whole structure is an extremely sensitive instrument and can measure wave patterns, vibrational patterns. And the apple tree has a specific vibrational pattern so if I tune in to the apple tree I can feel its roots.

LINDA:

And it is the vibratory sensation that is giving you this information.?

DAVID:Yes. It’s like a spreading under my feet.

LINDA:

Would you ask the apple tree if it would like to tell us something?

DAVID:

The apple tree is an interesting case because it’s used to working with humans.It seems perfectly happy to produce these big fat delicious fruit.

It’s been genetically selected for that purpose and its function is related to that.

It has suffered somewhat because, even though it’s a very healthy tree it had been leaning on a parking structure.And when we removed that structure it didn’t have that extra support anymore so it didn’t really have the root strength to hold itself up.So after three wet years in a row it fell over.

At this point the apple tree is quite happy that we’re here because it wouldn’t be living in the same way if we weren’t. It’s being held up by a rope now and without that it wouldn’t be able to do its thing now.

So there is a real interaction between the humans and the apple tree which maybe isn’t the case with other kinds of trees. There is a certain appreciation we have for it because it provides shade and apples.And it’s real happy to provide that in return because now it gets to stand up straight.

So if there was a message to give humans it’s just grow as well as you can, do your thing as well as you can.The tree is trying to make apples, it loves doing that and doesn’t really care who eats them.

LINDA:

She’s fulfilling her function as an apple tree and expressing her nature.

DAVID:

Right.

Then there’s this lovely big Doug fir that dominates our front yard.It’s a lot less connected or interested in the humans. It’s a wilder tree. And it’s perfectly happy to be here with us around it, it doesn’t have any animosity toward us.I think it appreciates some of its old crusty limbs being trimmed.

But if there is a message that any tree has to offer is to just be you.

LINDA:

Maybe I’m asking the wrong question.Maybe it shouldn’t specify any intent on my part except to just simply open a channel and offer them a forum if they wish to say something to humans.

DAVID:

I haven’t really attempted to translate the information I get from trees into words that much.It’s more like I just enjoy them.But if I was to translate it, and I’m thinking now of the Doug fir, I would say that there is something very lung-like about it.

It’s like an inside out version of our lungs.Our lungs are full of little holes or bubbles that we pull air into.But there are also branches that get smaller and smaller as they move outward. So this is like the inside out version of that where the branches are the things sticking out into the substance. They’re more like gills of a fish really in that the water passes over them rather than being sucked in.

The whole energy of the plant is connected to and inseparable from the whole life force on the crust of this planet.The planet is expressing its own life force through each of these separate entities and yet it’s the collection of all these entities which creates the whole planet.And this is true of us too, we’re just a conglomeration of various kinds of organisms that have gotten together and then within that conglomeration become distinct again.

It’s like a series or layers of distinctions that are sovereign to themselves but

somehow they get together and form another sovereign entity.

Literally there is carbon, which is the building block of life, coming in through the tree.In the process of pulling that particular life force into the earth it then releases this other substance which of course is oxygen and other things that we other creatures need to live.

LINDA:

Creatures with their lungs inside.

DAVID:

Right.I definitely have been in places where the trees don’t seem friendly but in most places the trees do seem friendly in the sense that they could not be otherwise.They are providing something that is crucial to us for our own existence.

I kind of want to have an actual communication for you but I don’t quite know what that would be.

LINDA:

Oh, that is perfectly OK.

DAVID:You know I’ve read C.S. Lewis and I’ve had my share of fantasy books that I’ve really enjoyed in which the Dryads, the spirit of the trees, would look like some wise old person and actually come over and chat with you!

But I think that’s an extreme anthropomorphic projection but…

LINDA:

Have you ever seen any Nature spirits?

DAVID:

I just saw one recently.I feel them far more often but I saw one recently.

There’s a lot of information out on the web and various places about orbs.People have been taking photographs and they get these phenomena and a lot of people think it’s just dust catching the light or any number of explanations.But these are happening in places where there isn’t anything like that.

In asking what could it be, there are people saying they’re nature spirits and that’s kind of what I saw.It was a round structure with some very distinct layers to it.It looks a lot like Desda’s image of what humans look like when she can look at somebody and see a similar structure.I feel it more than see it.

But this time I actually felt the energy over in this redwood area with a little creek there, I felt the energy and said well why don’t you let me see what you look like?I made this request and what I saw, briefly, was a big white globe.

LINDA:

Where was this?

DAVID:It was in the redwoods up on Mt. Tam.(Mt. Tamalpias in Marin County)

It was in the daytime and just sat down and communed , tuned in to the area like I’m doing now.

LINDA:

How long were you able to see it?

DAVID:

Well I had a friend nearby and it wasn’t nearly as interested in showing itself to my friend as it was to me so as soon as he got near, it went away.

Linda::

And when you felt the presence, what did it feel like?

DAVID:

Hard to say. I don’t know what plants it belonged to if indeed it did belong to plants.There’s a mysterious quality to those particular energies whether they’re fairies or earth energies or what.

They were slightly mischievous. They’re a little bit alarmed by humans because we’re so big & crashing around and doing things without thinking and really being aware of the interconnectedness of life.When one human is actually willing to sit down and be with them then they are more willing to show themselves.And then they’ll sort of make fun of you for being rather thick.(we laugh)

As a matter of fact there’s one hanging around right now. Some pressure just shifted in my head.And I thought of this previous time when an energy actually got in my hair.I could feel this thing holding on to my hair like it was riding me like a big animal and holding on to handlebars.My friend came over and laughed at me and said, “there’s one in your head”!

LINDA:

You said that there is one here now?

DAVID:

There’s something that moved in back of us.They tend to be a little cautious about how they approach but something just shifted and I’m not sure what it was exactly.

LINDA:

Is it still here?

DAVID:

Let’s see if it will tell me who it belongs to – a tree or something since we’re talking with trees.

(During this minute or so pause, we hear several birds chirping and calling in the background and sounds of the woods.It’s very beautiful)

I think it’s the entity which lives in this land which I’ve been trying to make friends with for quite a while. It kind of has this mixed reaction.It’s glad that I’m here and that I know that I recognize the spirit is here and am a human who wishes to have a relationship.It’s overjoyed by this acknowledgement and it wants me to pay a lot more attention to it.But I’m just this average human who bumbles around and tries to have a life.

I intend to make a house for it to live in and I have this idea of what I wantto look like but I haven’t it just sits on the chaise lounge over there. It’s an old bird house and it is the closest thing I have to make an offering.I’ve spiffed it up and put on shingles and will put on a nice roof line and things like that. But there is this sense of impatience on the part of the entity because I haven’t completed it and it feels like it’s saying well, “I’m always last on your list aren’t I ?!”

LINDA:

So you think this entity would prefer to live inside of something man made rather than outside in a tree or somewhere else in a natural environment?

DAVID:

Well, no, it just likes having the offering.It doesn’t necessarily live in that spot but it appreciates having that attention.Or maybe an animal would live in it but the birds and the bats never seemed to go in it so – maybe it was because the entity wanted to live there.

LINDA:

Is there some offering I can make?I usually bring tobacco but I didn’t this time.

DAVID:

Yes, that’s probably a good thing, just the appreciation and the acknowledgement.

One of the things that is different about this land than say probably just about everybody else’s land around here…our neighbors are pretty sensitive and I can’t really speak for other people – but I don’t see a lot of awareness.

When we got here the person who lived here before had wanted a view and his version of getting that was to cut all the trees off to whatever level it was that he could see over.Then he had lost the ability to do any maintenance or anything and then he eventually died and then there were renters here.

So when we got here 20 years later all the trees he had cut off by about 15 feet had grown up another 25 feet with 5 tops.And so the whole thing had this energy here like these deep dark woods that you might find Red Riding Hood going to the wolfs house or something.

So we had to cut down about 25 trees because they were really kind of dangerous, a fire hazard and they just weren’t letting any light in.

Every time I would take a tree I would beg it’s forgiveness and apologize for the stupidity of us humans and request that it go and begin a new tree somewhere.And I cold feel the energy leave and go and land in some other place.

So this is something I end up doing in houses a lot, especially out here in the valley.People just cut the trees down and plunk their house on the spot.And then they find there are places in their house that they don’t feel comfortable with because the tree spirit never left; it’s still living there thinking oh these stupid humans why didn’t they ask my permission?

And that’s all they want is a little recognition for the ongoing and connectedness of life of which they are a part.They really don’t have any problem with going over and starting a new tree or living with another tree.

They just want some respect shown to them.

And so I end up working with the funky energies in places and house that aren’t good.

LINDA:

You just reminded me of one of my intentions here.I guess what I’m offering is recognition to these spirits and opening the way for them to give any feedback or to make comments if they wish to do so.

DAVID:

Yes, it’s a really important thing and I think they really appreciate it.

LINDA:

This is sincerely about them and I’m just making my way here the best I can without having great sensitivity myself in understanding the subtle energies.

DAVID:

You probably are but just haven’t had a chance to practice it. So this is one way you are practicing.

LINDA:

Yes, that’s true.So now I ask how can I best honor you all through this medium of words and interviews that humans will understand.

DAVID:

There seems to be a collective answer from all green living things and that is to “try to get humans to understand how willing we are to give support and how that is our true nature and we just want that in return. We want to be acknowledged and respected and we want our wisdom to be accessed.We think that you should get it by now that there is an enormous wisdom at work just in the way things are.When you just apply an idea, a wish or desire to a piece of land without considering how everything works together in that land, all the entities and organisms all work together to create a balance and an incredibly abundant production of life.When you don’t understand that you make something that is far less efficient and far less

beautiful and you drain the vitality out of the area rather than enhance it.

Everything that grows naturally enhances life. And humans do to if they just slow down enough to get out of their head and actually communicate with and listen to and observe the things that grow and live around them.

So if there was a message that would be it. Slow down, pay attention and observe.And there is a lot of research going on now imitating nature.

LINDA:

What suggestions would you have for humans to gain a deeper understanding of the subtle energies of nature?

DAVID:

Basic principles of meditation are helpful.I’ve done enough meditation so that I can talk and meditate at the same time without them interfering with each other. I’m meditating right now and still communicating.

But I think most people need to get out of their head and not try to talk or put things into words and just feel and be.To just be with all that’s living there instead of just going on with their own internal story.

So if I were to try and translate what the nature spirits are saying, it’s just, ‘where are you, how come you’re not hear with us, slow down long enough so you can see and feel and hear what’s here’.

People sense things in different ways.For me it’s like a body sensation of literally being the same energy even though I’m distinct as are all these other living things that are here.

For others they may hear this tree whisper to them about spreading its leaves and collecting the sun.

(We hear the loud coarse sound of a Stellers Jay)

That Jay may be saying something to them but to me it’s just noisy.

You can hear a lot more nature out here and that’s why I live here.

LINDA:

Do the plant spirits understand our ignorance of their world and make allowances for this even though we disturb them?Or do some believe we are acting with hostile intent?I know that many nature spirits are very wary of us.

DAVID:

I think most of them are wary of us. Mostly we just crash around and we don’t have a whole lot of awareness as to where our feet are going.

Especially in places like jungles, most western people just hack through with a knife and don’t know how to get through a jungle without chopping it up.

LINDA:

Have you been to the jungle?

DAVID:

Yes, we were just in Costa Rica.

LINDA:

What is the wildest place you’ve been to and what was your experience there?Can you compare it to a forest where people normally go?

DAVID:

Well, that’s a good segue.Why don’t we go up to what I consider a wild place.

LINDA:

Excellent!

(We head up to a place about 10 – 15 minutes away by car from Forest Knoll.It is off a windy road that takes us into some hills in the vicinity of Mt. Tamalpais. We park in a turnout by the side of the road and walk for about 5 – 10 minutes to a spot that DAVIDAVID: knows well.He brought a specially made dowsing rod to help detect the movement of energy – mainly for my benefit I believe.We stop in a grove of oak and madrone trees on a soft sloping ridge with a view of a valley and woodlands. We are quite near the town of Fairfax.)

DAVID:

This sort of the gateway to it; which maybe you’ll be able to feel.

(Referring to a vortex of energy on/in the ground located between some oak trees.The dowsing rod responds with strong circular movements. I walk back and forth over this small area to get a feel for the energy.I stand on the spot where the vortex is most powerful and feel a kind of buzzing, mild disruption in my energy field around my physical body. For me it is subtle and I don’t know if I would have noticed it had I not stopped to concentrate. David is a good guide and I noticed a change in his demeanor while we are in these woods. It seemed to me that his focus shifted to concentrate more heavily on the spirit and subtle energies of nature and less attuned to the ordinary conversant reality that we were sharing before at his house. It was a powerful experience. The sounds of birds and the wind are close by.)

LINDA:

Where are we?

DAVID:

We’re in the municipal watershed just up above Fairfax.

(Fairfax is one of the small towns in Marin County east of San Rafael.)

So to pick up where we left off –I consider this a wild place even though humans come and visit it quite a bit.It’s not like a place way out where humans don’t go and live but it’s a place in that nothing grows here that was planted by humans for a specific purpose.So this place has something to offer us that other places where we live don’t – it’s different in that respect.

There’s something to be learned from watching things grow as they are.

What is it about this hill that is particularly nice for madrones?

Why do other hills have mostly oak trees?

Well, this place gets a lot of sun, it’s more open here –I don’t know.All I know is that there is something about madrone trees that speaks to what it is to be human in a way that feels different than oak trees do.

And maybe it has to do with the fact that they have skin that looks like us.

(we laugh)Maybe I relate to madrones more because of the smoothness of their skin.

LINDA:

That is your favorite tree?

DAVID:

Yeah, around here it is.

In the jungle I think maybe it’s the kapok tree, which is huge.

What would the trees and nature spirits say to a human being out here…

You don’t have to do anything about… you don’t have to make yourself into anything because you already are what you are. So sitting in a wild place does something for you that you can’t get anywhere else.Even if you’re very good about enhancing your own environment and everything really thrives because you’re living on it, and the things you’re growing for food and for pleasure are happy and harmonious with the rest of nature, it’s still different to go somewhere in which Nature is doing its own thing.

LINDA:

Can you explain in energy terms the different vibrations or qualities that you sense and feel between the wild and the home grown?

DAVID:

It’s as if the activities of humans, for the most part, blur and muffle the energy or the message coming through natural growing things.It’s as if there is a layer of cotton between you and the energy that is just there in Nature all the time.And if you go out to a place where there haven’t been humans altering it that much you can get a direct transmission of that energy.

It is the same energy that is what we are.It’s just that all of our attempts to do something with it, change it, create some affect, grow some food,whatever it is that you’ve done,doesn’t muffle the pure energy.And even though we need the results of our efforts to survive we also need this.

It is part of the nutrients that makes it possible to feel happy and alive.

And if we don’t have some direct transmission from trees and nature we don’t feel near as happy and alive.

Someone who likes living in the city might disagree with me but even cities have parks.One of the nice things about NY is that they have a section that has a sense of being wild.Even though it’s not it still feels like it.

One of the things that makes Europe such a strange place is that they don’t have any old growth forest anymore.They don’t have any forest that hasn’t been replanted in some fashion.

LINDA:

Oh yes, I happen to love Europe but I had not thought of that until now.

DAVID:

You know, if they have a pine forest, it’s a pine forest.If they have a fir forest it’s a fir forest, or a birch forest is only a birch forest.

Pretty much everything has been cut down and re-done and it doesn’t have that wild feeling anymore.You need to go to Russia to find that.

That’s one of the reasons that when I visit Europe I feel uncomfortable and I know I couldn’t live there.But when I was in Costa Rica, I felt, oh yeah, I could live here.

The jungle there is indomitable.I mean you could destroy it and it’s relatively fragile.All it would take is to plant something that takes over, changes the soil and nothing else can grow except what you planted.

And then just like a tree farm here, it just doesn’t have the same life force.

They are preserving a lot of their jungle because they recognize its value.

LINDA:

Are you speaking of Costa Rica specifically?

DAVID:

Mmm – yeah.

Here in the US there’s plenty of evidence that we don’t value the forests but then again there is quite a bit of evidence that we do.There a lot of parks and areas like this where they won’t let people build.

LINDA:

That’s a helpful perspective.

DAVID:

I’ll go try to talk to this one tree and see if I can pick up on anything specific that it has to say just for the fun of it.I’ve never really…

(_____??______lost in the sound of our walking through the leaves & grass.)

LINDA:

OK.(we go over to a madrone tree, one of David’s favorite kinds)

DAVID:

So there’s a basic sort of energy message.If it’s going to have any translation it would be something on the order of:

Everything is too temporary to be fussing about how to do something.

It’s like trying to understand what it is to be a human. It’s just like bewildered that we would bother trying to do so many different things.

( he laughs at this point)

It’s like saying, just grow.Stick your roots in the ground, stick your head in the air, pull in the sunlight, pull in the water, pull in the dirt, make yourself, get big, die, and enjoy the process!(we laugh )

It is just so happy to be what it is, it just can’t understand us fussing around…It just has an enormous amount of energy moving through it all the time.It never would even consider feeling separate.It doesn’t have that capacity to feel distinct in the same way that we do.

And one of the things about this is its not as self aware and yet it is.

It has a ‘self’ quality to it.It’s a self that’s so thoroughly wired in to the life force of the dirt and the air and the planet itself and the sun and everything that is moving through it.It doesn’t make an artificial distinction of ‘will I end at my leaves.And not even that I end at the electromagnetic field that comes off of me. Or I end at the spirit that hovers around me.

LINDA:

Can you tell the age of this tree?

DAVID:

It’s maybe 60 – 70 years old.

There’s a fabulous madrone over there that’s probably at the end of its life span. It’s part of the watershed and is well over 300 years old.Its smallest branches are this big.(indicate how big it is?????)

As a matter of fact one of its branches is bigger than that whole tree over there.

Its like if you took 12 trees of that size and put them all in one tree, that’s how big the circumference is.It would take about 35 steps to walk around it.

LINDA:

That is huge!(The tree he is comparing one of the trunks to is about 18 inches in diameter)

DAVID:

And it is dying.Three sections have died and only about 2 fifths of it are left. Because it connects with the time of when the native Indians lived here, there is something about its passing that is very symbolic of what’s going on right now.

So do you see why I like this hill?

LINDA:

Yes, absolutely.

DAVID:

The view, the flowers, the trees and sun and shade; and that power spot.

You can see that when these firs grow up they will start to shade out the madrones and then this will turn into a place covered with firs.

LINDA:

When you were getting this information from the tree is it correct to say that it was a telepathic communication?Were translating the energy you felt in your body?

DAVID:

I don’t know about the telepathic quality of it except that there is definitely some kind of transmission.When I say, “hello, can I talk to you?”Something says, “yes, you can”.

And maybe a little bit of a sense of humor, its sort of laughing at me because I think I need to touch it in order to communicate.(we laugh)

It’s saying something like, ‘what does this or that part of me have to do with anything?”

LINDA:

Meaning the physical part?

DAVID:Yeah.

(we hear cicadas all around us)

There was another place I was going to take you which is up on that ridge over there.You can see how the terrain changes, it gets a lot smaller.

It has to do with the soil.

There are a bunch of outcroppings of serpentine – its underwater lava from an old sea bed.A long, long time ago it welled up from under the ocean under immense pressure.And as the lava welled up it became totally infused with sea water.And there is something about it that makes it hard for most plants to live and grow on.

It’s fairly barren but then there’s this pygmy forest of cypress trees and juniper andyou’re walking along in this kind of vegetation we see here and then all of a sudden you think you’ve reached AZ.

LINDA:

That would seem abrupt!

DAVID:

And that’s very special too, that kind of energy.

That’s why I like Marin.It’s such a mélange of all these different types of energies.

This whole coastline is this process of bits and pieces of other continents banging into this one and scraping off parts of themselves and going all which way.This whole area is a mish-mash of things squashed together so you get all these different things growing here.

And of course Pt. Reyes is a whole different thing altogether.

LINDA:

Yeah, the Pacific Plate.And we are on the American Plate.

Do you have a favorite place in the world?

DAVID:Well this is certainly one of them.The place where we just were in Costa Rica is another.There is the Pacific coast with big steep mountains behind it.The jungle is everywhere with water all over the place, beautiful waterfalls.

LINDA:

That’s magnificent.

DAVID:Yes, things growing wild all over the place,all sorts of bizarre wonderful stuff.

Probably one of my favorite places is in southern Utah.

LINDA:

Oh, yes I love the energy of those mountains and rocks.I experience at a deep, deep level.

DAVID:

I’m sure I’ve lived there before.

I’ve been very fortunate to visit a lot of places and all of them have something amazing about them.

The only places I’ve been that don’t feel natural and good are usually places that have been messed with by humans.

I’m not all that fond of endless grasslands although I’m sure there is an energetic connection to be made there.It’s just that the idea of having to travel so far to get to a place the looks different from the place all around you is not my idea of fun.

LINDA:

Where did you grow up?

DAVID:

I grew up in Boulder, CO. Right at the edge of the Rocky Mountains.

LINDA:

I lived in Denver for 4-5 years a long time ago.I went to DU.

DAVID:

Oh, so you’ve been all over the place too?

LINDA:

Yeah.

DAVID:

I’ve also lived all over the Bay Area.I started in Palo Alto, went to Santa Cruz then to Berkeley, and then here in Marin.And this is the only place where I’ve felt, OK, now I’m home.

LINDA:

Mmm, yes, I know that feeling.

DAVID:

And I can be home here for sure and I can be at home in other places as well but…I liked Santa Cruz a lot but it felt like I would just go to sleep there.

LINDA:(We laugh)Well put!

DAVID:

There’s something both stimulating and relaxing about Marin.Berkeley and Palo Alto are just way too urban and busy for me as far as places to live.

I’ve never tried to live for long periods of time in big cities because it just never appealed to me.And I try to avoid suburbia because that’s where I grew up.I seem to have an allergic response to suburbia. There is something that is so separated out from nature about that.

There is this development where Kerry (his girlfriend / partner) bought land in Costa Rica.It’s a subdivision and yet I can tell by the way they have done things already that they are just going to let the trees and jungle grow up all around it.So there will actually be more forest there now that the farmland is being redeveloped.

LINDA:

That is good to hear. It’s usually the other way around.

DAVID:

Well, I don’t know what else I can say about this.I hope it’s useful.

LINDA:

This great David.Your perspective is wonderful and the descriptions you’ve given are vivid and the exercise you did with me is very helpful.I’ve practiced with a variety of energy and you offered a new twist to this that is very helpful, one that I could feel immediately.

DAVID:

You know the thing that appealed to me about Desda’s work is that it is so practical and down to earth.And yet we’re talking about aspects of ourselves that are so completely outside of our normal experiences.When you get to the spiritual layer, it’s a part of you that we don’t relate to that much.

This part of you is completely comfortable to being alive, being dead, coming in and out, having different shapes – it has no trouble relating to that at all.!

And yet we spend our lives mostly in that mental layer, we don’t even live in our physical bodies that much!We just kind of float around and think that this is what we are. And it’s so limited compared to what we actually are.

So if you give it a location it becomes far more palpable even though we’re not talking about a physical thing that’s four feet out from your body.It’s just a way of talking about it that allows you to get there more easily.

We’re really talking about another dimension.We’re mostly think that there are only three dimensions but we really, for the most part, live in the fifth dimension because we’re in our minds all the time. We haven’t even full grasped what it means to have a mind.We sort of live half out of our bodies and figure that’s just how it is, we don’t even question it.

And the truth is we are just so much magnificently more than that.By the time you get out to the part of you that’s the soul and you recognize that it is all just pure awareness coming straight through you anyway from nowhere to nowhere.

When you talk about experiencing this bubble, this ability to focus your awareness, what you’re talking about is the ability to give all of this an appearance in the first place.

Because when you look for something it collapses out of the emptiness of all possibilities and takes the shape of what you are seeing.You are looking at this soup of energy that’s doing all this stuff and because you go into warping time and space then you think, oh, well this is solid this is what’s real.

LINDA:

We’ve agreed to this being reality so that is what we see.

I’ve been practicing meditation for a long, long time and I’m so used to going inside.Your direction though of inverting the process allows me to receive new possibilities from “outside” so to speak.

DAVID:

Here’s the last little piece that may be useful is to understand that which is inside is the same thing as that which is outside.The pure conscious tube, or sushumna nadi, is just pure awareness – there’s nothing in there but that. It goes right through the middle of everything.And that which is putting you in contact with pure consciousness, the membrane between you and that same energy that creates stars, is also what gives you the distinction from just pure consciousness.It’s the ability to focus that energy in such a way that you can actually collapse time and space.

That membrane is the same membrane that goes outside and puts you in contact with all the time and space.We’re a donut.So all that we’re really doing is taking time and space and crunching it in certain ways.

And then we think oh, this is reality. Well, yeah it is also a phenomena created by consciousness saying, well what is this?Just the act of observing creates the crunching of time and space.

LINDA:

Like the examples in WHAT THE BLEEP.

DAVID:

Yeah. And so this is the anatomy of that magic.

LINDA:

I love the symbol you have on your business card, it’s beautiful.

DAVID:

Yes, that’s a picture of it. And that was just created by a mathematical algorithm on a computer program for designing shapes.

LINDA:

Did you design it?

DAVID:

My uncle plays with mathematical designs and we sat down one afternoon and played with it to create the design.

He traded some sessions with me for it.After one of the sessions he then came and took my class.He is interested in all this stuff and at the same time practical and skeptical.

LINDA:

Do you ever get into your own skepticism and pragmatism and question yourself?

DAVID:

Sure.It’s there all the time, it never goes anywhere.

I’ll be in the middle of doing something really wacky like adjusting some dial or knob in the cognitive layer that I told you about.And I’m thinking to myself, yeah, right, what are you doing, please?And a part of me is standing to the side saying, ok, thank you for sharing and would you please go away now I’m busy!

What else can you do!If you let it take over you would really be able to operate in that reality so – I don’t care if it’s real or not, I’m doing something to see if it has an effect.And by George, it does!!So I’m going to stick with it.( we laugh)

There’s an aspect of us which is one of the chakras.The chakras in Desda’s anatomy are not just the locations on the center they’re actually tubes that run from the front of the “donut” to the back of the “donut” and where they interact is the node that we think of as the chakra.But actually it’s the meeting of one tube with another tube.So it is a horizontal experiences meeting a timeless vertical experiences and this is how we create time and space. And that is timeless so in order to have a true experience we have to compare experiences in time with timelessness and take that information and put it back in our soul-reserves, so to speak. It’s how we evolve as a soul.

There are the seven main chakras in our physical body and there are three above and three below our physical body. And these are part of this bigger aspect of what we are in those other layers.And in the primal layer which is out from the emotional layer about 2 -3 feet out, and about a foot and a half down into the ground is one of those aspects and the chakra that is in that layer connects to the bottom of your feet through roots.They are little root like things that hook into the side of that chakra.

LINDA:

Huh – that’s new to me.

DAVID:

OK. It’s that chakra that attaches you to all the other humans on the planet.

It’s like that is the mycelium which humans grow out of.If the earth was not providing that mycelium available for human vibration then we wouldn’t be here. So that’s how we communicate and that is my version of what modo wire is????

So if I was to communicate with you through that layer I’d just send you a message from 18 inches down to yours.

(he does send me a communication but I do not get / feel it)

Did you feel that?

LINDA:

No, unfortunately nothing registered.

DAVID:

OK. Lift this foot for me.

(I lift my left foot and as he holds the side of it with one hand he places his other hand near the bottom of my foot, @ 5 inches away, and I see him make several turning motions.It looks like he is holding a round door-knob as he makes several turning motions.He does the same with my other foot and as he does this he says to me:.)

OK – plug that into the bottom and side of that chakra.And then this one, now plug that in to the other side.And we’ll put some of them all the way down to the bottom of the egg (meaning the subtle energy which surrounds the body in the shape of an egg. He is still using the door-knob turning motion ) which is where you get plugged in to the earth energies.

Now I’ll send you a message from that center.Do you feel it?

It’s just like contact at that level.

LINDA:

I definitely feel more rooted. I can’t say that I’m getting a message from you but I certainly notice a different sensation.I feel a tingling on the top of my head.

DAVID:

That’s because the energy center that is the opposite of the one below is up here.(above my head)Which is actually out of reach in the spiritual layer???.

So the spiritual and the primal have an opposite connection.So the one that’s up here is called the sun and it has to do with the guidance that you’re giving yourself all the time.It’s like, what are the agreements I made about where I’m going and what I’m doing.

And its compliment is in the air here between your ankles.It’s in the emotional layer, therefore when it’s connected and relating to its opposite then you are walking the path that have actually agreed to be walking.

The tape ends here although I’m not sure why.We are at the end of the interview but there was a bit of wrapping up and many thanks from me given to David for his time and teaching.

As I was transcribing this last bit which describes what he did with “turning knobs in my energy field”, I got goose-bumps and a warm feeling washed over me as I remember this experience.It had a powerful and beneficial affect on me.